JDK-4971166 : JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable
  • Type: Enhancement
  • Component: core-svc
  • Sub-Component: tools
  • Affected Version: 5.0
  • Priority: P3
  • Status: Resolved
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • OS: generic
  • CPU: generic
  • Submitted: 2003-12-19
  • Updated: 2020-02-10
  • Resolved: 2004-02-23
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Other
5.0 b40Fixed
Related Reports
Relates :  
JDK-8039152 - Need a way to suppress message when picking up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS
Description
Tool vendors need a uniform mechanism for adding options to a launch of the VM.
Particularly, they need a mechanism whereby they can launch agents (such as a 
JVMTI agent) along with the VM, even if the VM is embedded.

We currently prepend a _JAVA_OPTIONS environment variable but this is not
documented or supported.  Since it is not standardized, other vendors have
their own names e.g. IBM_JAVA_OPTIONS.  Leading underscore names are private
so we don't want to standardize _JAVA_OPTIONS additionally it doesn't match
functionality we want to standardize, for example it doesn't support qoutes.
So we need a new name and it should indicate it's intended usage so slightly
lessen the likelyhood of misuse -- JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS.
Comments
CONVERTED DATA BugTraq+ Release Management Values COMMIT TO FIX: tiger-beta2 FIXED IN: tiger-beta2 INTEGRATED IN: tiger-b40 tiger-beta2
14-06-2004
SUGGESTED FIX The following will be added to the JVMTI specification -- Platforms which support environment variables or other named strings, may support the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS variable. This variable will be broken into options at white-space boundaries. White-space characters include space, tab, carriage-return, new-line, vertical-tab, and form-feed. Sequences of white-space characters are considered equivalent to a single white-space character. No white-space is included in the options unless quoted. All characters enclosed between a pair of single quote marks (''), except a single quote, are quoted. Double quote characters have no special meaning inside a pair of single quote marks. All characters enclosed between a pair of double quote marks (""), except a double quote, are quoted. Single quote characters have no special meaning inside a pair of double quote marks. A quoted part can start of end anywhere in the variable. White-space characters have no special meaning when quoted -- they are included in the option like any other character and do not mark white-space boundaries. The pair of quote marks is not included in the option. JNI_CreateJavaVM (in the JNI Invocation API) will prepend these options to the options supplied in its JavaVMInitArgs argument. Platforms may disable this feature in cases where security is a concern; for example, the Reference Implementation disables this feature on unix systems when the effective user or group ID differs from the real ID. This feature is intended to support the initialization of tools -- specifically including the launching of native or Java programming language agents. Multiple tools may wish to use this feature, so the variable should not be overwritten, instead, options should be appended to the variable. Note that since the variable is processed at the time of the JNI Invocation API create VM call, options processed by a launcher (e.g., VM selection options) will not be handled.
11-06-2004
EVALUATION This is needed by vendors such as Compuware. ###@###.### 2003-12-19
19-12-2003